Abstract

A recent decision of the Botswana Court of Appeal is of considerable interest in the constitution-making that is part of the decolonisation experience in Africa. It deserves the attention not only of other African countries which acquired constitutions containing fundamental rights provisions in either identical or near-identical language, but also of those bent on fashioning a new political dispensation in Africa in the future. Independence for Botswana came in the September of 1966 when this small country (Bechuanaland) became the independent Republic of Botswana. The move - virtually an overnight one - from authoritarian colonial rule to the new political and constitutional dispensation was a courageous and bold one. By it this country took, as it were, a leap from the known to the unknown, making it in the words of one author part of a "brave new world".